To facilitate communicating electronically, mail aliases are employed. A mail alias enables a plurality of recipients of an electronic mail (e-mail) communication to be specified by one name (an alias) assigned to that plurality of recipients. Mail aliases are particularly useful when electronic mail is to be sent to a group of recipients more than one time.
In order to use a mail alias, the mail alias is created and a set of members (e.g., recipients) is associated with that alias. Then, when an e-mail is to be sent out to the members of the alias, the mail alias is typed into the TO section of the e-mail header, instead of the individual members of the alias. By invoking the send function, the e-mail is sent to the members associated with that mail alias.
A mail alias is created as a static entity. That is, the mail alias remains defined to a set of members, until that alias is manually updated. To update the alias, the author of the alias (or another entity) adds a new member, deletes a member or makes other changes. This manual process is tedious and prone to error.